Football focal point advice needed

[madplower4]

Just curious as to what focal points you "pros" or even "appear to be Pros' prefer to use when shooting a fast moving depth changing sport such as football. I have been using center focal point only combined with CF 4.3 but as the runner (for example) is cutting and juking back and forth, keeping that red dot locked on him while the camera is trying to focus (ai-servo) I seem to have, focus, out of focus, focus, focus, out of focus etc. Someone at a game said he prefers a 7 point focal use, but I've never tried that. My point is that holding the red dot on a continually changing and speeding target is tough. Your advice? And the obvious "you just stink!" response is not acceptable on a day that the LORD has given us!!

Thanks in advance!!

[Merciez]

I prefer the center focus point with the assist from the sourounding points (AF expansion).

[primoz]

You just stink :mrgreen:
No seriously... For football (American or European) one single spot is perfectly fine. Just that it's not center one, since with fast lenses you have face of player out of focus already due shallow DOF. Personally I go with af point which will fit on players face with my composition. It takes a bit of practice, but it's really not all that hard. Especially because football is not all that fast game. Once you are shooting something speeding at you at 100+km/h you consider football and similar sports as slow moving sport :)

[madplower4]

Can you elaborate on AF expansion? I haven't heard of that term. Thanks!

[Merciez]

AF expansion is when the camera will mainain focus on the original subject by shifting to the adjoinng focus point when the subject moves off from the center focus point. This is only available on the 1D series cameras, I was thinking it was available for the 30D (it is not). Sorry for the confusion.

[StewartR]

AF expansion is when the camera will mainain focus on the original subject by shifting to the adjoinng focus point when the subject moves off from the center focus point. This is only available on the 1D series cameras, I was thinking it was available for the 30D (it is not). Sorry for the confusion.The 30D - and even lesser a camera like my 350D - is capable of something along these lines, though.

From the 30D manual, page 76:About Predictive AF
If the subject approaches or retreats from the camera at a constant rate the camera tracks the subject and predicts the focussing distance immediately before the picture is taken. This is for obtaining correct focus at the moment of exposure.
When the AF point selection is automatic, the camera first uses the centre AF point to focus. During autofocussing, if the subject moves away from the centre AF point, focus tracking continues as long as the subject is covered by another AF point.
With a manually selected AF point, the selected AF point will focus track the subject.

[primoz]

Stewart it's not really exactly same. With 1 series, you can set Cfn to expand some points around selected point. It actually does similar as first option with 30d (af point selection is automatic), but it's linked a bit more to selected point. And another issue... Even with this Cfn set, you still control which af point will be tracking object, while with automatic af point selection, camera makes really weird decisions sometimes. But of course it's crazy to expect 30d will do exactly same things as 1d does... and for so much less money :)